The Trustees and leadership of the Greenwood Public Library are excited to announce a major change to our circulation policy: the removal of late fees. Borrowers will still be responsible for replacement costs for lost items, but late fees will no longer be collected for items circulated at GPL.
One of the strategic initiatives outlined in our soon-to-be-released Blueprint 2019/2023 is to “make library easy.” For many patrons, the threat of late fees deters them from library use. Others find themselves with unexpectedly large fines and lose library privileges as a result. And although libraries have traditionally believed that late fees encourage the return of materials, research shows that late fees actually do more to discourage library use than they do to bring library materials back. GPL is proud to join a growing number of libraries across the country who are making the move to remove late fees.
As a part of our revised circulation policy, we have also enabled automatic renewals, making library use easier than ever. You will still receive reminder emails before your due date (if you have enabled email communication), but as long as your items do not have anyone waiting on hold for them, they will be automatically renewed. Be aware that books have a maximum of two automatic renewals, and DVDs have a maximum of one renewal possible.
If you are an Evergreen card holder and travel to other libraries to checkout materials, those items will be subject to the circulation policy in effect at that library. The new GPL Circulation policy applies to anything you check out at Greenwood Public Library, regardless of which library it came from. For more details please refer to our Circulation Policy.
For those who wonder how we can afford to do this, we’d like you to know that we expect the financial impact of this decision to be approximately a half of one percent of our operating budget. Through careful stewardship, our library is financially sound and healthy. We believe that the financial impact of this change will be far overshadowed by the opportunity it provides for us to make library easy for all of our patrons.
We have been looking forward to doing this for quite some time and are very excited to share this good news with you today. If you have late fees on your account that are keeping you from coming back to the library, please come see us! We can help!
Merry Christmas from us to you!
Thank you. And what a well crafted message. I appreciate that you used data and solid evidence to inform this smart and thoughtful decision.